Integration centre employee: Immigrants need to feel more welcome

The Prague Integration Centre in Žitná street, just a few minutes’ walk
from Wenceslas Square, is housed in an inconspicuous-looking building, but
inside the place is busy as a beehive. Foreign residents from different
parts of the world come here for advice on how to rent a flat, find a job
or deal with residence permit problems.

Photo: Archives of the Prague Integration Centre
A mixed group assemble for their weekly Czech class - a Russian woman
married to a Czech, a worker from Ukraine, a young Mexican girl who moved
here after falling in love with Prague and a young mother from China. All
have one thing in common –they are building a new life in the Czech
Republic and trying to feel at home here. The language barrier is not the
only hurdle they face.

“Sometimes I still experience this kind of thing, for instance on a
tram, people sometimes look at me as a foreigner. Just the looks, they
don’t say anything, but I can feel by the way they look at me that they
don’t like me that much.”

“We have a problem getting integrated because most of the people here
don’t speak English. In the evening you find people who speak English,
but during the daytime it is hard really, because the other side don’t
speak too many languages.”

“Once I was buying flowers in a flower shop. I just said I’ll have
this, this and this one. And they were not very kind to me. Actually, they
were rude to me. I don’t know why –I was just buying flowers. Maybe
because they could see I’m from Asia, I don’t know.”

Here immigrants are certain of getting sympathy and help. The integration
centre offers not only language training and legal counselling but
communication with inter-cultural guides who have experienced the
difficulties of integration first hand – and who are there to help
newcomers to the Russian, Vietnamese, Arab or Ukrainian community. Most of
the centre’s employees are foreigners who remember well the difficulties
of starting a new life in foreign country. Alen Kovačevič is one of them:

“We were lucky. First of all we were lucky to escape from the war
unhurt. We escaped first to Belgrade and from Belgrade to the Czech
Republic. We had friends here from Sarajevo and they told my parents if you
want to start a new life somewhere the Czech Republic is a good choice. I
cannot tell you much about negativity. Of course, sometimes you could hear
someone say – you are Yugoslavian –go back home – but I wouldn’t
say it was the general attitude. I was lucky here, my family was lucky here
to get a great response and I have many Czech friends. But of course, once
in a while, you get a negative example of how people should not act. It
happens to everyone.”

After four decades of closed borders during the communist years, people
had a problem opening up to foreigners, or, one should say, some
foreigners. According to a poll conducted in 2010 by the CVVM polling
agency some were more welcome than others. Czechs gave Slovaks the highest
marks on a foreigners’ acceptance index, followed by French, Swedish,
British and Austrian and American citizens. On the other hand Russians,
Ukrainians, Chinese nationals and people from Muslim countries are likely
to get a wary, if not unwelcome, reception.

The centre’s project coordinator, Tereza Třístková, says that some of
these prejudices are deeply ingrained and handed down from parents to
children, but should disappear in time.

“The young Russians who are living here today are not those who invaded
us in 1968.”

“I think that because in the 90s Ukrainians were employed here as cheap
labour there is this stigma attached to the whole community, and the same
goes for Russians; the young Russians who are living here today are not
those who invaded us in 1968, but you will still get someone on a tram
mumbling an insult in the direction of a young Russian girl when clearly
she had nothing to do with what happened.”

Hai Anh Vu, photo: Archives of the Prague Integration Centre
Hai Anh Vu moved here from Vietnam with her parents at the age of 11. She
says her best friend is Czech and this is now her new home. Anička – as
her Czech friends call her –is now an intercultural guide at the center,
helping those who see doors banged shut in their face when looking for work
or to rent a flat. She speaks from first-hand experience.

“When I called – and I think I have good Czech so they couldn’t
recognize that I am a foreigner –it was OK, but when I turned up I could
see the shock on their faces. So yes, we have struggled a lot to find a
flat. But on the other hand, I understand why they don’t want to accept
foreigners. They are still scared of people they don’t know. They hear a
lot of bad things about foreigners on television and they are scared; the
landlord is scared his flat will be damaged or they think the job will not
be so well done by a foreigner.”

The migrant crisis and the threat of terrorism have only made existing
prejudices worse. Although foreigners make up just over 4 percent of the
population, a 2014 poll showed that 51 percent of Czechs thought there were
too many foreigners living in the country already. 42 percent said the
number of foreigners was just about right. Only once percent of respondents
said the society should be more multi-cultural.

“When I called, it was OK, but when I turned up I could see the shock on
their faces.”

Alen Kovačevič says things are not as bad as polls may suggest.

“Maybe it (integration) looks harder than it actually is. Because many
cases, many good examples of how people here live in harmony together are
not seen. We –as an integration centre -also get more information about
negativities. We get information that some Czech clerks are rude to
foreigners or that a doctor or dentist does not want to accept a foreigner
as a patient. So those are some of the cases we deal with. But, in general,
I would not say that people here are not accepting of migrants. Of course,
society is polarised, in the last two or three years people have been
talking about a war in the Middle East, so you have many hot-tempered
discussions and in some cases negative, backward thinking, but in general,
if you ask some Ukrainians, Americans, South Americans what their life here
is like they will tell you that life is good and they don’t have many
problems with Czechs.”

Tereza Třísková, photo: Archives of the Prague Integration Centre
Tereza Třístková is also sceptical about the negative picture presented
by some of those polls. She says that many Czechs she knows speak
cautiously about ‘foreigners as a group’ but will readily tell you that
Mr. Vu from Vietnam who runs a mixed goods store on the corner is a very
nice guy. She says the atmosphere created by the migrant crisis is not
helpful to integration or to the people working hard to promote it.

“We do not talk much about welcoming foreigners, because we are afraid
that we will then be labelled as idealists, do-gooders and pro-migrant
advocates, because at this time if you befriend foreigners, defend migrants
and are active in the intercultural sphere, many fellow Czechs feel that
you are lacking in patriotism, that you are not a good enough Czech.”

Alen Kovačevič says that while Czechs are extremely friendly once you
get to know them, their initial reserve comes as a shock to many foreigners
used to a different temperament.

“Integration is a two-way process and the problem of Czech society is
that they expect people who come to the Czech Republic to integrate just
like that (snaps fingers) and to feel right at home here. But it does not
work that way. You have to open your arms more widely, to help them, grab
them, explain many things to make them feel that they are really welcome
and that they can count on you. That’s the problem, many foreigners
expect much more than they get from the Czechs.”

“My advice: never give up. Some things should never get you down. You
know, sometimes people feel desperate because they still do not have that
visa or residence permit they have been waiting for for two years. But
maybe sometimes the situation is not as difficult as it looks. So my advice
is never give up, think positive and if you have a problem come to us.”